In 2023, the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University released a thought-provoking report on the significance of place, titled Place Matters: What Surrounds Us Shapes Us. The report details the impact of the social environment, built/natural environments, and systemic influences on child health and well-being. The Center defines these components accordingly:
- Social Environment: “The presence or absence of key influences in a child’s social environment plays an important role in their development.” Examples include caregiver well-being, faith and cultural traditions, and community support.
- Built & Natural Environments: “The accessibility and exposure to various influences in a child’s built and natural environments shape their development directly by influencing their biological systems and indirectly by interacting with their environment of relationships.” Examples include access to clean water, air quality, safe green space, healthy housing, and access to nutritious food.
- Systemic Influences: “Broader systemic influences that shape children’s development directly, while also shaping their environment of relationships and their built and natural environments.” Examples include intergenerational poverty, systemic racism, current and historic public policies, and healthcare disparities.
Importantly, these components of the framework do not operate in isolation. For example, intergenerational poverty (systemic influence) can impact housing security and affordability (built environment), which impacts caregiver and child health and well-being (social environment). The report resonated with us as team members of Childhood Prosperity Lab (the Lab), a program of the Office for Community Child Health that focuses on advancing social innovations. We define social innovations as creative strategies that support the health, development, and well-being of children, families, and communities. Social innovations often include programs, resources, services, and frameworks that reach children and families where they live, learn, work, play and pray. These innovations often emerge through collaboration among residents, community organizations, and cross-sector partners who collectively identify opportunities for change and co-design them.
Place-Based Innovations & Approaches
Place-based innovations are social innovations that consist of new ideas, solutions, and strategies that uniquely impact communities within a specified geographical location. Rather than adopting a generalizable approach upfront, place-based innovations consider the unique assets and needs of a community and meaningfully engage the residents, community-based organizations, and other key stakeholders to incorporate their needs, goals, priorities and lived experiences into the design, implementation, and evaluation.
Facilitated by Connecticut Children’s, North Hartford Ascend is an initiative that connects children and families living in the North Hartford Promise Zone with the programs, services, and other resources they need to reach their full potential from prenatal care through career readiness. Through key activities of Ascend, the Lab is addressing the social environment, built environment, and systemic influences so that all children and families in Clay Arsenal, Upper Albany, and the Northeast neighborhoods thrive. The Lab has meaningfully applied Human-Centered Design (HCD) approaches and methodologies to the mission of Ascend, ensuring that the resident, community, and partner voice is integrated into the design, implementation, and evaluation of social innovations.
Place-based innovation does not operate on one-size-fits-all approaches; on the contrary, it creates the conditions for incorporating communities’ needs, goals, and priorities in the design, implementation, and evaluation of social innovations while accounting for community context. Innovations that are responsive to the needs, goals, and priorities of key audiences increase the likelihood of the innovation’s efficacy, usability, and interest in those it is designed to ultimately impact. As a key partner of North Hartford Ascend (Ascend), the Lab has co-designed and advanced numerous place-based innovations like the Ascend Community Resource Map, Tabletop Game Day Afterschool Program, and the Ascend website itself! Together, these efforts demonstrate how place-based innovation can strengthen community capacity and create pathways for generational prosperity.
Innovation as the Key to Community Transformation
Transformative place-based innovations require the meaningful integration of community voice at every stage - design, implementation, evaluation, and scale and spread. Place-based leaders are uniquely positioned to leverage local knowledge, lived experience, and community priorities to cultivate and advance innovations that generate a lasting impact. The Lab is ready to serve as a trusted partner and support place-based leaders as they advance these efforts. Together, we can elevate community insight that drives key outcomes while addressing community priorities.
To learn more about how Childhood Prosperity Lab can support your work, please visit our website and connect with us.